Bibliographical news

 

Prieto, J. M.; Muñoz, P.C.; Sánchez Muñoz, A.
Virtual learning frameworks: the new information and communication technologies applied to continuing training in the Spanish speaking world. Madrid : Tripartite Foundation for Training at the Workplace (Fundación Tripartita para la Formación en el Empleo), 2003. 268 pp. (Documents and Reports, 2)

 

Continuing training is being reinforced in all fields and sectors of activity, and today it is a usual topic in collective bargaining. It also turned to be one of the central elements of employment and competitiveness strategies until it became part, in 1998, of the National Vocational Training System along with Regulated and Occupational Vocational Training. Although it is quite established, continuing training is still young. Its formal emergence coincided with a time of sweeping changes in Vocational Training, set forth in Organic Law 5/2002 on Qualifications and Vocational Training, which are generating deep deliberations among agents and institutions involved with training. As far as continuing training is concerned, some of the activities that may be promoted by the Tripartite Foundation for Training at the Workplace are research, reflection and a debate concerning its role in the National Qualifications System, its methodologies, its quality or any other element. In Spain, the co-existence of Regulated, Occupational and Continuing Training has given rise to an assortment of training paths and actions which, beyond their differences, share a common objective: to encourage citizens to train themselves and improve their qualifications, with a view to their entry or reinstatement into the market, or either keeping their place in it by recycling and updating their knowledge.

"Virtual learning frameworks" is a preliminary report prepared for the Foundation for Continuing Training (FORCEM) by a team of the Department of Differential and Occupational Psychology from the Complutense University of Madrid, leaded by José M. Prieto, one of the authors of this document. It addresses an area which is currently the most discussed in the specialised literature and in communication media and is one of the priorities set by the Tripartite Foundation for Training at the Workplace. The incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to learning is transforming training programmes and their organization processes, the relationship between those who teach, those who learn and the media and instruments facilitating these relations.

The Report focuses on the new frameworks made possible by ICTs, starting from document exchange standards and protocols through the Internet, which were set up and reinforced between 1990 and 1995. In this way, it intends to determine the degree of development attained in the relation between training and ICTs, as well as their applications, and to find out what are the needs posed to enterprises and workers by these technologies and which are the main obstacles arising at the moment of applying them to training. The Report also contains considerations about the role of the Continuing Training subsystem in this field.

Virtual frameworks are listed in order in correlation with the description of "traditional" teaching techniques, with learning processes as the backbone element of reference. This course highlights references to FORCEM, focused on the disclosure of information made by those who promoted training initiatives developed under training aids, and classified by their degree of interaction with users. There is also a chapter devoted to anticipate Continuing Training applications of new signal transmission standards. The Report's results and conclusions, already posted in the web page of the Research Department of the Complutense University of Madrid, do not represent an opinion of the Foundation concerning this topic. They are intended to promote interest in and use of new virtual spaces.

In addition, the publication includes a specialised bibliography of high interest and nearly 200 international web sites dealing with the issue under study in the Hispanic world.
Finally, it should be pointed out the presentation of a glossary of great help for a thorough reading and understanding of the document.

Chapter 1. Introduction
Purpose of the study: "Training and new technologies"
Objectives of the report
Work methodology
Working restrictions
Work assumptions

Chapter 2. Training, Continuing Training and New Information and Communication Technologies
Links between training, continuing training and new information and communication technologies
Requirements of enterprises and workers with respect to the introduction of online training programmes
Obstacles in the use of new information and communication technologies

Chapter 3. FORCEM, Continuing Training and New Information and Communication Technologies (NICTs)
The interface between continuing training and NICTs
New action lines on continuing training with NICTs that may be promoted by FORCEM
Evolution of continuing training subject to signal transmission standards

Chapter 4. Conclusions
Chapter 5. Bibliography
Chapter 6. Glossary

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